BJFF 2016: Shady

Shady a Japanese thriller released in Japan in 2012 and then by Third Window the following year in the UK. This was a welcomed addition to the Brick Lane Japanese Film Festival. A 93 minute story of bullying in Japanese schools where the treatment gets so out of hand that school children take justice into their own hands.

Kumada (meaning Bear and Rice Paddy) played by Mimpib is the overweight student in her classed bullied by the popular girls and nicked name 'Pooh'. She witnesses bullying in her class but does not intervene to avoid herself being caught in the cross fire. Eventually one girl goes missing and her case becomes high priority in the news and also a mystery at school. Who kidnapped her? A teacher, a fellow student? Is she still Alive? these are all questions running in Pooh's mind.

You eventually realise that the girl who has gone missing was also a bully who had made other girls lives hell including pretty loner Izumi. Strangely she is given a hard time for being attractive the opposite of Pooh. Izumi reaches out a hand of friendship to Pooh and they become close friends. Pooh finds it hard to believe how kind Izumi is and despite neglecting to help Izumi in the past when she was being bullied.

You begin to feel uneasy by this instant clinginess to Pooh by Izumi and she even follows her to her only club which is the biology club where she is the only member. Izumi envy's the love Pooh has for her class fish and mysteriously the fish dies. Izumi says it was a accident but who can really be sure? Was this a malicious attatck as Pooh formed an attachment to a fish, no a male fish?

At a shopping trip Izumi treats Pooh to some mascara which Pooh refutes as it was stolen and she makes advances on her. This left the audience confused, what was it Izumi wanted from Pooh? Or was she securing Pooh's loyalty by doing pleasurable things as a form or bribery. Nothing is clear and the plot thickens when Izumi see's Pooh has a bird as a pet, a male bird, Izumi demands to borrow Chuta the bird and Pooh is alarmed and at first refuses but is emotionally blackmailed into agreeing. The next day Izumi makes a joke abou the bento she has made Pooh saying it used to Chirp and immediately Pooh believes she is eating her pet Chuta. At this point you would think Pooh would end the friendship but somehow Izumi talks her way out of it. Mean while there is a lot of emphasis towards the missing classmate and the bullying at school.

One thing leads to another and things suddenly move fast paced, Izumi invites her to her flat, different from her house, their is a horrific stench coming from one of the rooms. They are also joined by another guest, one their their school teachers who Izumi explains is giving her test questions in exchange for sex. Things start to make more sense, perhaps the bully at school was horrible but she wasn't the one who dissapeared the other girl, Izumi so tramatised from the bullying has snapped and done one terrible thing after another...to a point of no return. The end result is only bloodshed.

Written and directed by Ryohei Watanabe he focuses on inner torment inside human beings and how innocence can be polluted and turned into manipulation and selfish gain. We see the change physically manifest in Izumi through her eyes becoming blood shot and the mirrors smashing as she puts on her 'facade' aka the stolen makeup.

This film explores bullying as a real phsycological experience which is shown as more harmful than physical fighting. Similar to the film Confessions this film really looks at taboo subjects and exposes the Japanese education systems flaws. No one see's the bullying nor goes to investigate the disappearance. There is a sense of negligence.

Overall the film was slow paced which built up to a swift conclusion, every detail mattered so you really had to focus on the film. It didn't feel long at all, the animal torture aspect is shown to be an outlet for students in a few films I have seen so far which is perfectly disturbing signs of a psychopath. Even though it was low budget and you only see a small cast set in a school, it is perfectly directed. Pooh has many opportunities to seek help but feels trapped in an open world. A great physiological thriller to be appreciated , you will enjoy this if you liked the Audition.

Showed at Brick Lane Japanese Film Festival with permission of Third Window Films. Available to buy online.

Review: PK

This film had my head in a whirl - the adverts didn't reveal much about the movie apart from the main actor being Aamir Khan walking around butt naked having his dignity covered but a retro boombox cassette player. Posters of this were removed in India but made quite a stir in regards to the movie.

Straight-away you know something is unusual about the main character 'PK' which means Tipsey/drunk in English. His eyes are constantly open with a permanent shocked looking face and over accentuated ears pinned forward.

PK came out December 2014 and I would class as a comical drama because of the themes addressed.
The film begins with Anushka Sharma, Jaggu, trying to get into a poetry showing but the tickets are sold out to her favourite authors rare event. Another guy has the same dilemma. Through this chance meeting they become friends and then lovers - one problem Jaggu is Hindu and Sirfraz is Muslim. This is highlighted across the lines in regards to marriage and Jaggu's parent are against the relationship and seek advice from the local religious baba/priest. He plants the seed of doubt in her mind.

Jaggu tests the strength of her and Sirfraz's love and insists they get married the next day. Upon finding a stood up bride holding a basket with a kitten. A letter is delivered to her with no name and simply says 'I cannot marry you.' she then melodramatically moves back to Mumbai (her parents have disowned her regardless) so she takes a job as a TV channel reporter to support herself.

 Boss Boman Irani gives her novelty stories to cover like 'Why is this dog depressed?' (Can a dog be depressed firstly?). She is disheartened with the ridiculous stories and goes in search for something to make a journalistic impact on the world.

Queue 'PK' teleporting down to earth from his spaceship. I kid you not, this film is about aliens. I was so suprised from the advert you get the impression Pk is strange maybe even autistic but he is on a whole other level. He walks around a desert with only his remote to get to the ship. Unfortunately the first person he meets steals it leaving behind a retro cassette playing - now the only thing to cover Pk's dignity.

Things aren't easy for Pk as he cant understand nor speak the native language (Hindi) in order to he has to absorb the knowledge from a person by holding there hand for 6 hours. That is easier said than done and he treated like a pervert. Till then he figures out that rocking cars with steamed up windows normally means there are clothes nearby and paper with Ghandi's face can buy food.

In between figuring our human customs he gets hit by Sanjay Dutt in a car, who thinks he has given PK amnesia and decides to look after him tell his memory returns. Through this he keeps trying to hold girls hand (even a few men) and Dutt takes him to a brothel to get this 'perverse behaviour' out of him. He then learns language and information through the un-educated prostitute and travels to Mubai to find 'God' who could return his remote.

This get's interesting as he asks people who this person 'God' is and people point in directions of church, Mosques/temples and he goes, follows all the customs and still no remote. Nobody stops to explain @god' isn't a person he is an entity people worship and believe in and here's where the confusion lies. This is where he comes across Jaggu and she wants to televise HIS story. He doesn't understand why there are so many religions why not worship the same 'God' he pretty much called the same name - just the way of worship is different. This ties into the baba from earlier on who told Jaggu to dump her Muslim boyfriend as 'you can't trust Muslims'. Pk attends one of his talk and questions him on his ridiculous answers like: "My Mother in law is sick, what can I do?"
 in which he responds "Buy this holy charm from my shop and go to this mountain and pray." Pk laughs, why is he praying on a  mountain when he can be looking after his mother-in-law?

The film explains miscommunication and how certain sects/cults take advantage of people for money and use there beliefs for the wrong use. The Baba has Pk's remote and claims it is a holy charm. I don't think I can praise this film enough for being out of the box in ideas and discussing something quite taboo. Aamir Khan got blasted for bringing the Hindu-Muslim hate topic into the lime light.

This film deserves all the acclaim it has received it has managed to balance a combination of hard hitting drama with sci fi and comedy. The cast was spot on and they broached the subject pf religion with tact and had a few songs too. I'd rate this 8/10 it is a must to watch and in the screening I attended there was one Asian family and the rest were mixed between Englisn, Malasian, Indonesian and Chinese. This film is universal - any one can enjoy it and the subtitles were written well.

The film is currently the highest-grossing Indian film of all time, and ranks as the 66th highest grossing film of 2014 worldwide. PK is in the list of IMDB’s Top 250 films of the world. The film was directed by Rajkumar Hirani, produced by Hirani and Vidhu Vinod Chopra, and written by Hirani and Abhijat Joshi.

Review: From Up on Poppy Hill

A anime movie from Studio Ghibli which quietly hit the cinema and went in 2011 which feels like forever ago. I missed the initial cinema showing but caught it on DVD release which I borrowed from Becca, (League of Extraordinary Cosplayers). This anime tells a tale of two kids fated to find out a sick truth that would change their lives forever.

This story is based around history and is set in 1963 Yokohama, Japan, the first thing that struck me is the main protagonist - high school girl Umi Matsuzaki. She has the same tendencies of the characters in Ponyo, everyday in her boarding house she puts up flags as they did with the lights in Ponyo. Umi is forced to grow up early as her mother is always away for business so she is left managing her Grandma's boarding house. This entails from waking up before all the guests, cooking breakfast, getting herself and her sister ready for school. Her father went out to sea to never return but puts the flags up in case he ever did come back.



One day a school a bunch of kids set up a spectacle to get attention on the pending close of their club house. This envolves a boy jumping into a pond/pool. The boy is Shun Kazama, a dashing member of the school's newspaper club, he straight away charms Umi into helping him clean up the school's clubhouse, Quartier Latin.

Tokumaru, however, has different ideas, the chairman of the local high school and a businessman, intends to demolish the building for redevelopment and Umi and Shun, along with Shirō Mizunuma, must all band the school together to convince him the building is important to them.

Without ruining the whole movie there is another plot revolving closely around Shun and affects the developing relationship between him and Umi, as school crushes go this one is complicated.

Umi is considered lucky as everything she is involved becomes fruitful. This is hard for her to live up to as Shun takes a turn for the worst in his beaten male ego which he takes out on her ignoring her. Which everyone notices.

The missing parental figures are quiet important to the story and through miscommunication and assumptions a huge secret is unearthed about Shun which is is desperately trying to prove wrong again with Umi by his side everything is put straight.

This film requires a lot of focus as every little detail is important to both intertwining plots. The best way to describe this movie is historical slice of life. I much prefer Studio Ghibli's fantasy aspects which this story had zero amount of and one of the themes is quite cringe worthy. To not spoil it I recommend if you are a hardcore Ghibli fan you should go watch. If you got bored of Ocean's Wave then stay away from this title too!

I give this movie a 5/10

The Little Prince Animated Movie

The Little Prince was originally a French novella published in 1943 by aristocrat, writer, poet and pioneering aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944).

The novella is both the most-read and most-translated book in the French language, and was voted the best book of the 20th century in France. Translated into more than 250 languages and dialects (as well as braille). It is one of the best-selling books ever published!

The narrator explains that, as a young boy, he once drew a picture of a boa constrictor with an elephant digesting in its stomach; however, every adult who saw the picture would mistakenly interpret it as a drawing of a hat. Whenever he explained the drawing people would tell him to give it up drawing and so something else.

Now an adult himself, the narrator has become a pilot, and, one day, his plane crashes in the Sahara desert, Here, he meets a young boy whom he refers to as "the little prince". The little prince asks the narrator to draw a sheep. The narrator first shows him his old picture of the elephant inside the snake, which, to the narrator's surprise, the prince interprets correctly.

Over eight days stranded in the desert, the narrator attempts to repair his plane and draws pictures for the little prince while he recounts the story of his life. The prince begins by describing life on his tiny home planet.

After many adaptations it is being adapted into an animated film, this time by Kung Fu Panda director Mark Osborne.

It releases in October 2015, France. Watch the trailer below.